The look in Ryder’s eyes told her he didn’t believe that for a minute. Once a cheater, always a cheater. Once a con man, always a con man.

  “So what do you want to do?” she asked. “Do you want to tell Josie, warn her about him? Confront Matt again and demand he return the money?”

  “Do you think he would?”

  Monica snorted. “Not likely.”

  Ryder nodded. “I don’t want to upset Josie if we can avoid it. Once we have proof, or if Castor does something else, maybe we can break it to her. But until then, I’d rather we kept this to ourselves.” He released a deep breath and ran splayed fingers through his sandy hair. “I don’t know what Matt is up to, but he’s got your money and I’m not sure there’s any way to get it back.”

  He fixed her with a determined glare and rested his hands on narrow, boxer-clad hips. “Do you still think your plan for tomorrow morning will work? Getting them out of the room and searching through his things?”

  Monica smiled. For the first time all evening, her spirits buoyed. “Is a frog’s ass watertight?”

  Ryder’s lips thinned, whether in confusion or distaste, she didn’t know.

  “Yes,” she clarified. “The answer is yes. Matt never goes anywhere without that damn messenger bag, and usually his laptop. There has to be something in there showing I gave him that money. As long as Josie leaves the lanai door open, we’ll be able to sneak in and out and they’ll never know the difference.”

  With a sigh, Ryder said, “Then, as much as it pains me to say this, I think your plan may be our best course of action.”

  He moved around her to his side of the bed and pulled back the covers. Monica followed his lead and then continued smoothing on moisturizing lotion. Replacing the cap on the small bottle, she crawled under the covers and turned off the lamp closest to her. Ryder rolled to his side and did the same.

  “Good night, Ryder,” she said into the darkness.

  A heartbeat passed and she thought he might have already drifted off.

  And then his deep voice carried across the wide bed. “’Night, Mrs. Nash.”

  It took Monica a long, long time to fall asleep.

  Chapter Sixteen

  Don’t wait to get to know somebody better before you kiss ’em. Kiss ’em and you’ll know ’em better.

  Monica awoke at the crack of dawn the next morning. She’d tossed and turned most of the night, too excited and nervous about today’s venture to sleep soundly. As soon as a touch of morning light filtered through the drapes, her eyes popped open and she began to sit up—only to realize that her face was plastered to Ryder’s warm, bare chest.

  She blinked, wondering how she’d ended up so close to him when they’d fallen asleep on opposite sides of the bed last night. Even rolling around like she had, she didn’t remember rolling into him. And that was something Monica thought she would most definitely remember.

  Then she became aware of his arm curled around her waist, his hand on the side of her breast. Her leg was draped over his thigh, her knee resting very close to his—

  “Morning, sweetheart. Care for a quick tumble?”

  Her heart jumped into her throat as her eyes swung to his face. Ryder looked completely content, staring up at her with drowsy amusement.

  If she weren’t so embarrassed about unconsciously drifting into him last night, she might have been amused, too. Her face flushed and she threw back the covers to climb out of bed.

  “No, thank you.”

  “You sure? You’d be surprised at what a cowboy can learn, spending his days around all that rope and hay.”

  The images his words created burned themselves into her brain and caused every inch of her skin to tingle with sensual awareness. She dug down deep for a healthy dose of sarcasm and shot back, “Yeah, I’ll bet you and your friend, Ned, can get real creative.”

  His self-assured grin slipped a notch at that and she hurried on. “It’s time to get dressed. We have to be ready and listening when they leave the room.”

  Sifting through her drawer of limited clothing choices, she gathered a few things and hurried into the bathroom. When she emerged, wearing a short floral skirt and sleeveless periwinkle blue top, Ryder was propped against the headboard, his pillow folded behind his back, one leg thrown out over the bedspread.

  He looked picture perfect—if you liked those sexy pictures they put on dirty playing cards—and good enough to eat. Her stomach growled in agreement and she quickly turned away, stuffing her discarded nightshirt in the first drawer she reached.

  “All yours,” she gestured toward the bathroom, then busied herself with making a huge production of folding and rearranging the bulky bit of cotton.

  More leisurely than she’d have liked, Ryder got out of bed and moseyed—yes, he definitely moseyed, damn his cowboy hide—into the bathroom. Two minutes later, he came back out, still wearing nothing but his navy blue boxer shorts.

  He opened one of the dresser drawers that contained his clothes and pulled out jeans, fresh boxers, and an undershirt, then headed back to the bathroom. Stopping just short of the doorway, he turned to stare at her, letting his gaze wander from the low V-cut of the blouse’s bodice, to the inverted V-cut at the hem that left a portion of her midriff bare, to the ropy sandals she’d just slipped onto her feet.

  “What?” she asked, becoming anxious under his intense scrutiny. It was bad enough she’d had to stand there and watch him digging around for clean clothes while he was all but nude. Now he seemed to want to touch the outfit she had on. She looked down at herself, trying to see if her breasts were arranged crookedly inside her bra or she’d forgotten to put on underwear.

  “Do you ever wear clothes that cover more than twenty-five percent of your body?”

  She sucked in her stomach, stuck out her boobs defensively, and tugged just the teeniest bit at the back of her skirt. It was fashionably short, but not salaciously so. Clearly he didn’t spend enough time flipping through the types of magazines she shot for, otherwise he’d know this sort of outfit was downright demure in comparison to some of the styles that were out there.

  Without a whit of apology and daring him to offer another word of criticism, she answered, “Sometimes. Just not when I’m on a Hawaiian honeymoon.”

  He did another head-to-toe perusal, one corner of his mouth tipping up in a grin. “Thank God,” he whispered, then disappeared into the bathroom.

  …

  When Ryder returned to the main room, he found Monica on her knees at the very head of the bed, the rim of a water glass pressed against the wall, the base to her ear. The position emphasized the tightness of her skirt and shortness of her top, accentuating every hill and valley that decorated her extraordinary female form.

  He swallowed and curled his fingers into the pockets of his jeans. He’d known marriage would be hard, but he’d never imagined it would be this hard. And damned if it wasn’t, he thought as a bolt of sexual awareness shot through his body to pool in his groin.

  Arguments over money, vacation disasters, and holidays with the in-laws, he could handle. Watching Monica slither around on a king-size bed in an outfit that wouldn’t cover the butt of his Winchester, he wasn’t so sure about.

  Clearing his throat to keep from doing something stupid, he moved toward the closet for a shirt. “Anything exciting going on over there?” he asked. Even though he was relatively sure nothing could be more exciting than what was going on in their own suite.

  “Shhh, I think they’re getting ready to go down to breakfast.”

  She ignored him completely as she pressed her ear even more firmly to the glass and wall. Shrugging into a long-sleeve shirt and tugging on his boots, Ryder allowed her to listen for another few minutes before grabbing the phone and dialing the hotel restaurant.

  As he began talking to the hostess, Monica shushed him again, but he staunchly ignored her. “Yes, my wife and I are supposed to meet another couple in your dining room for breakfast,” he explained, “but we’re running a little late, and I was wondering if you could tell them that we’ll be down as soon as we can.” He gave a brief description of Josie and Matt, thanked the woman for her assistance, and hung up.

  Monica had turned around on the bed to face him, a strange expression on her face. But it sure as hell beat staring at her rear end.

  “What did you do that for?” she asked.

  “I don’t want Josie and Matt to get worried or suspicious when we don’t show up. This way, they’ll think we’re just running late and will wait.”

  Her eyes brightened and she smiled. “Good thinking. You’re better at this than I expected.”

  He glared at her for her apparently low opinion of him, then drawled, “Darlin’, I’m better at a lot of things than you’d probably expect.”

  The makeshift eavesdropping device slipped out of her hand as her brows shot up in surprise, and she barely managed to catch the glass before it hit the headboard. With a grip less steady than before, she switched the listening glass to her other hand and pressed her head to the wall once again.

  “I think they’re leaving,” she whispered. “No, wait…wait…yes. The door just closed.”

  Ryder and Monica both stood, his feet firmly on the carpeted floor, hers bouncing on the mattress as she wobbled to the edge and used his shoulder for support while she jumped down. Ryder put his hands on her waist to help her, then quickly let go when the warm silk of her skin all but singed his fingertips.

  Monica must have felt it, too, because she stopped dead in her tracks to gaze into his eyes. Then she seemed to shake off the sensation and raced out to the lanai.

  “Yes!” she cried and threw her arms into the air Rocky-style when she saw that Josie had indeed left their balcony door open. The gesture raised her top a good three inches, giving Ryder a prime view of her belly button ring and a tasty glimpse of her where the curve of her hips disappeared beneath the waist of her skirt. His eyes locked on that small portion of her anatomy, and he stood frozen until Monica grabbed his hand and pulled him into Josie’s and Matt’s honeymoon suite.

  The room looked almost identical to theirs, except for a different set of tropical paintings on the wall and the alarm clock on the opposite side of the bed.

  Monica immediately set about searching for Matt’s bag. It wasn’t out in plain sight, though Ryder didn’t know why he’d expected it to be. She opened cupboards and drawers, drew back bedspreads, and scoured the inside of the closet.

  “Damn it.”

  “What’s wrong?” She sounded so forlorn that Ryder went to stand next to her in front of the closet. On the floor sat a metal safe, and Ryder knew exactly what Monica was thinking. If the bag—or more likely, laptop—was inside, they’d never get their hands on it.

  “Don’t hotels usually provide a combination for the safe? Or do you think Matt would come up with his own?” he asked.

  “He probably used his own,” Monica said. “But if he did, he also probably wrote it down somewhere convenient. Let’s double-check the nightstands. Maybe the pockets of some of his clothes.”

  While Monica shoved her hand in and out of every pocket in the closet, he set about running his palms over the surfaces of both bedside tables, even the back of the headboard. His fingers bumped something big and lumpy near the bottom, and he put one knee on the mattress to get a good look behind. On the floor, close to the wall, was a dark brown fabric satchel like the one Monica had described. He grabbed it by the handle and dragged it out.

  “What do you think?” he asked Monica. “Is this what we’re looking for?”

  She lifted her head briefly to glance in his direction, then went back to picking pockets. “No, the combination has to be on something smaller than—”

  Her head whipped back around. “Yes! Yes, that’s it!” She slammed the sliding closet doors closed and launched herself onto the unmade bed. “Thank God. Where did you find it?”

  While he told her, she propped the case against her legs and threw it open, pulling a lightweight laptop from inside.

  “Anything important is probably password protected. Do you know what that might be?” Ryder asked.

  “If he hasn’t changed it since we broke up.”

  Ryder rolled his head away, about to tell her Matt most likely had changed his password. It was a smart thing to do every couple of months, anyway, and if Matt was as devious as Monica claimed, the guy probably changed his passwords every other day or so. But a second later, the top popped open and Monica flashed him a wide smile, like a prospector who’d just struck gold.

  Then again, maybe his new brother-in-law wasn’t the sharpest tool in the shed.

  Falling to her butt on the bed, she propped the tablet on her knees and began tapping the keyboard, running her fingers over the touchpad as she searched file folders and documents. Ryder sat next to her and studied everything over her shoulder. A lot of words and codes he didn’t understand zipped past his vision, and the speed at which Monica worked didn’t help. But he began to realize that Matt was playing with a shit-ton of money and had his fingers in quite a few pies. The cash may not be liquid, and he may not have even told anyone how much he had stashed away, but judging by what he could make out, the man had accounts—big ones—all over the world.

  “This is it,” Monica said suddenly, her voice unnaturally low. “I think this is it.”

  Ryder leaned right while she leaned left, and they sat with their shoulders touching, reading the document on the screen. It appeared to be an email confirmation from an offshore bank verifying that fifty thousand dollars had been successfully transferred to MAC Holdings, LLC.

  “Is there anything else?” he asked.

  Monica did a bit more scrolling, then shook her head. “I don’t see anything else for fifty thousand even.”

  “Do you think that will be enough?”

  “I don’t know, but I’m not taking any chances. I’m downloading everything.”

  Dipping into her blouse, she produced a flash drive and stuck it into the USB port on the side of the laptop. More tricks from Monica and Her Magic Cleavage, he thought wryly.

  “If the money is still there, we may be able to get it back,” she said. “If not, I’d assume he’d have a statement of the transfer to another account somewhere in here, too.”

  Just then, they heard a sound outside the hotel room door. The scraping of a key card, feminine laughter. They looked at each other, panic racing through them.

  “Take this.” Monica shoved the laptop at Ryder’s chest. She quickly shoved everything else back in the messenger bag, leaving no trace that they’d been poking around.

  “Come on, come on, come on.” She stood behind him, one hand on his back, eyes darting nervously toward the door while she begged the download to hurry and finish.

  Ryder glanced toward the lanai as the door handle started to turn. They’d never make it out in time. Grabbing Monica’s hand, he yanked her down to the floor and all but pushed her under the bed, sliding in beside her, laptop and all, only seconds before someone bounced onto the mattress.

  “I can’t believe you forgot your wallet,” Josie said.

  “If you hadn’t been rushing me, I probably wouldn’t have. Good thing Ryder and Monica are running late so we could come back up for it.”

  “Good thing I had my key,” Josie returned.

  And then the mattress lurched again and muted laughter reached their ears.

  Ryder flinched and Monica lifted her hands to her ears, muttering, “Oh, no. Not again.”

  …

  Springs squeaked. The mattress moved above them, coming very close to hitting them both in the head. Monica turned to bury her face against Ryder’s shoulder, then caught a whiff of his cologne on her first deep inhalation of breath. The scent brought to mind images of him back at the ranch, in his dirty jeans and boots, leather gloves, and dusty hat, smiling crookedly even though a cow had apparently kicked him in the jaw. Not to mention the sight of him that morning in nothing more than boxer shorts and smooth, bronze skin.

  Those thoughts, combined with the noises above them, turned the blood in her veins lava hot. She covered her ears and tried to roll away, wanting to be as far from Ryder as possible when she went up in flames, but his arm stopped her. With a vise-like grip around her waist, he kept her next to him. With his other hand, he tipped her chin toward the computer screen, which had finished downloading onto the flash drive.

  She was torn—did she uncover her ears long enough to eject the thumb drive and shut down the laptop, or did she wait out the X-rated activity taking place above them and hope she could get everything taken care of before Matt noticed his messenger bag was missing? To her surprise, Ryder grabbed her hands and yanked them to his ears, then placed his over hers…the buddy system of blocking out what neither of them wanted to hear.

  He jerked his head toward the screen, urging her to take care of things before they got caught. And though she knew he was right, she was also keenly aware of how close they were.

  His gaze was hot, smoldering, and she knew it mirrored her own. She clapped her hands even more tightly over his ears, hoping he would take the hint and do the same for her. Although in a second, he was going to be a sitting duck for whatever noises trickled down to the floor. Squeezing her eyes closed, she shook her head, then made sure that when she opened them again, she was looking at the laptop and only at the laptop.

  As quickly and quietly as possible, she ejected the flash drive and stuffed it into her bra where she was sure it wouldn’t fall out. Then she closed Matt’s email program and anything else she’d opened while snooping, then stuffed it all back in the bag. Reaching around her, Ryder returned the tote to exactly where he’d found it on the floor, hidden behind the bed’s headboard.

  Now they were both unprotected, every sound in the room seeming to echo off the walls and bounce straight to their hiding place. The second their eyes met, Monica knew it was too late to try to block them out again. The raw, naked longing in his eyes made the rest of the world cease to exist, because she felt exactly the same way. She no longer heard Matt and Josie above them, doing whatever it was lousy ex-fiancés and brand-new brides did at nine o’clock in the morning. She no longer cared that her marriage to Ryder was a convenient one, supposedly in name only. She wanted him, and from the rigid press of his arousal against her hip, she knew he wanted her, too.